Despite the 'Mancovery', This Is Still a 'Mancession'

Payroll gains here in the U.S. probably bounced back in February, helped out by more seasonable temperatures and a pickup in manufacturing.

Employment increased by 190,000 workers this month, the most since May 2010, after a 36,000 gain in January, when winter storms depressed the count, according to the median forecast of 59 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News ahead of Labor Department data scheduled for release this Friday.

The report may also show the jobless rate increased to 9.1% from 9%.

But, when it comes to who is actually standing on that breadline, it’s the men who have suffered disproportionately. So says Dr. Mark Perry, a professor of economics and finance at the University of Michigan.

The chart below shows male and female employment levels on a monthly basis back to January 2002:

Dr. Perry spells out the two broad conclusions from the data:

1. From the peak of almost 138 million payroll jobs when the recession started, the U.S. economy has lost 7.7 million jobs since December 2007. Of those 7.7 million job losses, 5.1 million are jobs previously held by men, which represent 66.1 percent of the total recession-related job losses. Women have lost 2.61 million jobs, or 33.9 percent of the total losses from December 2007 to January 2011. Never before in U.S. history have jobs losses fallen so disproportionately on one gender as during the 2007–2009 recession.

2. During the one-year period from January 2010 through January 2011, male employment increased by 937,000 jobs, while the number of female jobs increased by only 47,000. But even with those recent job gains for men over the last year, there is still a huge gender disparity in job losses since the start of the recession— for every 100 jobs lost by women since December 2007, men have lost 195 jobs. And despite the recent employment gains for men, the male jobless rate in January of 9.5 percent remained a full percent above the female rate of 8.5 percent.